


If You Die, I Feel Like That's on Me

by Cakepopple



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Irondad, spidersiblings, spiderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 11:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21445654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cakepopple/pseuds/Cakepopple
Summary: “Easy, kiddo. Take a breath—”“How can I take a breath when people die because of me? They’ll never take another breath again, how could I just keep on going, even knowing that my shortcomings hurt people? It’s like you said! If someone dies, it’s on me!”Peter heaves, fists clenched. Ash flakes from his filthy palms, soot coats the eyes of his suit. Even with the suit giving him new, clean oxygen, his head still pounds from the smog he’d already inhaled. His hands shake, and he’s not sure if it’s the adrenaline, the poisoning from however many toxins are in his lungs, or the anxiety. He thinks he’s on the brink of a meltdown, thinks he’s going to be more than merely useless this battle, thinks he might actually harm the efforts with his incompetence.If his previous actions hadn’t already ruined everything.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 69





	If You Die, I Feel Like That's on Me

**Author's Note:**

> this is fluffy i promise!! it just has to get there!! :)  
also this is, like, the shortest thing I've ever written??? wow!! me, being able to condense my thoughts into a decent length?? bizarre. a wild concept.  
anywho, ENJOY !! :)

It’s hell. A cream colored beach day, the taste of salt and sunscreen on his lips, and the cooler of capri suns by their beach towels had all been turned to hell. Peter and Aunt May had flown to a bay down south, in Virginia, with Tony, Pepper, and Morgan a couple days ago, hoping for warmer waters and new experiences. The weather had been warm and pleasant. This morning, they’d stuffed their bags to the brim with sandwiches and chips before lining up to walk from their rented house to the beach. 

It was supposed to be relaxing.

But now, the whole scene—the family picnic with bay-water in their hair and bits of shells on their shoulders—is a blurry, painful nightmare. 

Peter is pissed at himself for it. His stomach feels gutted, like a mix of disappointment and anger with himself. He should have noticed, he should have stopped it, he should have been able to  _ save _ people; that’s what everyone counts on him doing. 

Worst of all is that he  _ had _ noticed the threat—a couple suspicious men by the docks—and he’d merely been too optimistic and distracted by his family to tell anyone. Too taken by the lure of Morgan’s smaller hand tugging on his own, dragging him to the edge of the water to dig moats and sandcastles.

And for a while, the fleeting glimpse he’d caught of those men by the docks had been buried in a crevice of his mind. They’d been a glance, a squint, a shake of his head, and nothing more. They were forgotten faster than they’d been noticed. 

But then, in an instant, heat slapped Peter’s cheek. Something like steam from a boiling pot, like the crackle of a spark in a fireplace, like a burning palm to his cheek, knocked him over. And easily, his world was thrown on its side.  _ Everything _ rang.

For a couple seconds, all he knew was the burn of his eyes and the throb of his head and the ache of his ears. Something echoed, like someone calling out to him, but he couldn’t think to process the words. Couldn’t see anyone to read their lips.

The first thing to creep back into his ears was the blame. His own muttering of, “Oh, God. God,” as his internal monologue went haywire with panic and fault. Stunned moments passed, and Peter still feels stranded, even now. 

In a blinded, half-deaf haze, he reaches his hand out, scrambling to find Morgan. She’d been there a second ago, and Peter digs his nails into the sand castles, pats his hands over the grime, in hopes of connecting with her arm or her head or anything to help him find her. He finds nothing. His eyes open, he feels a burn like smoke, and his lungs close. Even so, his eyes squint through the char. 

“Guys,” he croaks. It’s thick and fractured, a question, a plea. A call for Tony, May, Rhodey, Pepper, anyone close enough to help. A call for everyone he hopes is alive. He doesn’t know what happened, but he knows he feels alone. Coughing, he scans with more vigor; his hands scrape the sand desperately. “Morgan?” His mind fogs and fumbles, but it spirals only to her. Peter is the closest to her—where is she?

A wheeze sounds maybe a foot away. Frantically, Peter moves towards it. He can’t see the source through the thick waves of ash, but he begs for it to be Morgan, pleads for her to be alright. “Peter,” a small voice cries, as soon as his fingers brush against skin, “Peter?” Nodding, he stifles a cough and feels with his hands for her head. After orienting himself, he dips his arms under her, scoops her up. 

“It’s me,” he promises. In his head, he counts her breaths against his shoulder, but aloud, he can only struggle to force himself to breathe in the smoke. His lungs stutter as he searches for the others. “Aunt May?” Peter begins to move from kneeling to standing, but the smog gets thicker with every inch he rises. He collapses again. “May!” 

Regret aches in his chest, worse than his infected lungs. It’s a reminder that everything he touches falls apart, everyone he loves gets hurt. He should have said something about the men, should have warned Tony. 

He sees a fire burning between his smoke-shrouded group and the docks he’d seen the men by earlier. There’s a dent in the sand underneath it, smears of charred black streaking out. It’s the aftermath of an explosion, and while Peter hadn’t seen any families set up with umbrellas on that part of the beach, he fears the worst. 

Slowly, he pieces things together. 

“Aunt—” A crash pounds next to Peter. Falling backward, Peter cups his hands tighter around the back of Morgan’s head. “I’ve got you, kiddo. You’re okay, Morgan.” And yet he can’t promise that, definitely can’t ascertain his own safety; his voice wavers. How many explosions would there be? 

He swallows, licking ash off his lips. His hands tremble around Morgan. A second crash echoes; Morgan sobs. But as the ringing in Peter’s ears subsides, he notices the last two crashes weren’t like the first. They’re closer, less like explosions, and more like thuds. Peter hears one more before he begins hearing footsteps instead.

Slow and heavy, the sound of clanging metal gets closer. Peter doesn’t have his suit or his web fluid; he has nothing with which to protect the child in his arms. He tugs her closer, burying his face in her hair, as though it would hide them both away. The smoke is too thick, and he wishes the stench and toxins would knock him out faster, if only so he wouldn’t have to die from another explosion or from the threat these ominous pounds of footfalls represent. 

A hand—or what feels like it might be a hand—lands on his forearm. Peter scrunches it back, holding Morgan tighter and thrashing his legs. He shouts, screeches, and wrenches Morgan as far from the hand as he can. The hand comes closer, slides up to his shoulder, and holds him down against the sand. It’s not harsh, but it’s stern. Peter tastes salty ash on his lips as tears carry soot down his cheeks. 

“Peter!” Upon hearing his name, Peter grinds his teeth and gives one leg a determined, directed kick. His bare foot, the bone of his heel, clacks against metal, yet still, he bends his knee for another go. He’s lashing out like a caged animal; it’s all he can do. “Peter, it’s me! Look! It’s just me!” Peter, dazedly peels his eyes open, fingers still tight and nervous and safe in Morgan’s hair. Ms. Potts leans over him, Rescue suit and all, mask pried halfway up her face, so Peter can read her eyes. “It’s just me.” 

Loosening his grip on Morgan, Peter garbles, “Wh—Where did you get your suit?” She holds her arms out, taking Morgan and sliding her mask back down. When she turns, Peter can see she has May on her back, mostly incoherent. Her only sign of consciousness is a few sputtered coughs. But she’s certainly alive, and Peter breathes better knowing that.

Ms. Potts’ next words come out muffled by the roaring fire nearby and the layers of smoke, as well as the mask she’d slid down over her mouth. “Tony had it flown here just now. Or they came automatically when the explosion went off. His suit and yours are here, too.” She nods her head, a vague point to the thuds Peter had heard earlier, which Peter belatedly recognizes as the pounds of the suits landing. He thanks Tony’s paranoia, for once. 

The jets of the Rescue Armor flash, just one more puff of smoke in the mix, and Ms. Potts flies away from shore. She’s likely bringing Morgan and May to safety before returning to help more people in the haze. Peter watches her until there are too many feet of smoke between them to see her any longer. After that, he crawls to where he’d heard the other suits land.

By the time he reaches his own, activates the nanotech, and gets a bearing on where he is, Tony is already returning from a round of flying civilians off of the beach. Peter watches him land, feeling a sense of uselessness crawl to the front of his mind. A taste of guilt is like blood on his lips. The fault is thick and permeating, the kind of thing he fears would stain his skin like an incriminating dye. The kind of thing he fears everyone else notices and understands. 

_ That it’s his fault.  _

Wobbling towards Tony, tears burn behind his mask. “Mr. Stark?” The cry makes Tony turn; his immediate change in posture demonstrates he’s relieved to see Peter. He catches Peter’s shoulder once he’s close enough, not turning away, like he’s scanning his vitals, reading his body language. “Mr. Stark, I’m sorry. I—I thought a couple men were suspicious earlier, and I didn’t point them out, and now people are hurt, and I’m so, so sorry. I let you down, it’s all my fault, I—” His knees buckle. His body crumples in sadness and regret.

“Easy, kiddo. Take a breath—”

“How can I take a breath when people die because of me? They’ll never take another breath again, how could I just keep on going, even knowing that my shortcomings  _ hurt people?  _ It’s like you said! If someone dies, it’s on me!” 

Peter heaves, fists clenched. Ash flakes from his filthy palms, soot coats the eyes of his suit. Even with the suit giving him new, clean oxygen, his head still pounds from the smog he’d already inhaled. His hands shake, and he’s not sure if it’s the adrenaline, the poisoning from however many toxins are in his lungs, or the anxiety. He thinks he’s on the brink of a meltdown, thinks he’s going to be more than merely useless this battle, thinks he might actually  _ harm _ the efforts with his incompetence. If his previous actions hadn’t already ruined everything. God, he should have  _ said something— _

Tony sighs, drapes his arms over Peter’s shoulders in a loose hug. “It’s not your fault. It’s okay to mess up, you know. You’re always gonna make things right, Peter. That’s what counts. Look at you here; sure, you didn’t prevent that explosion, but you’re doing your damnedest to help people  _ now. _ That’s all you can do. You can’t see the future, you can’t change the past. You’ve just gotta power through the present.”

Peter lets his own arms wrap around Tony, uneasy and gentle and self conscious. His cheeks are soaked under his mask, and he’s grateful his mentor can’t see. Guilt continues to burn between his ears. It feels like everything still rests on his shoulders and beats on his back, like he’d messed it all up. Pulling away, he swipes his gaze along the flaming shoreline. “That’s… but this is still my fault. I have to get better! People are counting on me, and if I’m not  _ perfect,  _ then—”

“Nobody’s perfect, Pete. No one expects you to be.” Tony sets his hand back onto Peter’s shoulder, catches Peter’s attention, so it’s not locked on the disaster any longer. “If you spend so long regretting genuinely unintentional mistakes, you’ll never be able to correct them.  _ Nobody _ could have seen this coming, kid. But only  _ you _ can help fix it.” His voice is warm with a hidden smile and he takes his hand from Peter’s shoulder, pointing at a family Peter can hardly see through to smoke. “Now, ask Karen to turn on your scanners and get out there, Spider-Man. I know you can do it.”

Peter freezes for a second, letting his gaze fall to his feet, to the thick, smoldering smoke hanging around him. “You really think I can? I’m cut out for this? ‘Cuz honestly, I’m not sure I’m the best choice to save people.” He swallows, fists clenching by his thighs, and he hardly notices the lights on his display flicker as Karen turns on her sensors. 

“Even when I took your suit back, I never  _ once _ doubted you were the right choice, kid. I am certain you can do this. There is no one I trust to be Spider-Man more than you.”

A flash of confidence flickers throughout Peter. Squaring his shoulders, he nods. “Well, who am I to doubt you, the genius billionaire?” He punches Tony lightly in the arm before turning and running to help the closest family. 

“And philanthropist,” he hears echo after him. “Don’t forget that part!” 

Peter laughs, waving one flick of his wrist back towards Tony, as he shouts, “Of course, how could I miss that?” And he can hear his own happiness in his voice, how an inkling of a smile muffles and stretches his words. The throb of guilt has fluttered its way out of his stomach, and he’s confident he can make a difference. A positive one. Tony was right; the future and the past are beyond anything he can help, but right now? The people who need him now? He can definitely help them. “Thanks, Mr. Stark.”

Out of earshot, Tony watches him leave and says a quiet, “Any time, kid.” Then there’s a pause before Tony jogs towards the next set of civilians to save. He shakes his head, chuckling to himself. “All that fuss and how many casualties were there, FRIDAY?”

“Still no casualties, sir.”

A short, quiet burst of a laugh pops past his lips. “That kid really is too cautious for his own good. Too quick to blame himself.” As Tony gets close to the nearest person who needs help, he briefly turns around to look at Peter one final time. 

Pride pools in his chest, like something tangible and comforting, while he stops there, watching his kid help people. His kid is saving lives, despite all his insecurities, because he never wants to let anyone down. Because he cares about people. 

So much love in one kid.

Tony smiles. “Yeah,” he whispers, voice gentle and fond. “I know you can do it, kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> please comment and kudo!!! it means a lot to me!!  
if you want, you can follow me on [my tumblr](https://peterparkerincorrectquotes.tumblr.com/), too!


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